Google announced the project two years ago and announced Kansas City as the lucky recipient of the 1-gigabit-per-second Internet access. It turns out it's not easy to deploy that fast a network for hundreds of thousands of people, though, and as Google works its way through the challenge, faster broadband is gradually arriving elsewhere, too.

Kevin Lo, general manager of Google Access, announced today that Google is done surveying and measuring and now is ready to lay fiber. But for starts, it'll only be the backbone of the network, not the connections to actual homes and businesses. Lo said:

As we build out Google Fiber, we'll be taking thousands of miles of cables and stretching them across Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri. Each cable contains many thin glass fibers, each about the width of a human hair. We'll be taking these cables and weaving them into a fiber backbone--a completely new high speed infrastructure that will ultimately be carrying Kansas Citians' data at speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have today.

At first, we'll focus on building this solid fiber backbone. Then, as soon as we have an infrastructure that is up and running, we'll be able to connect Google Fiber into homes across Kansas City!

Google, a giant on the Web, benefits directly when people get faster, more pervasive Internet access. Not only does it mean more people can use the company's core revenue-generating product, search, it also means it can build more sophisticated online applications for things like word processing, maps, video, and social networking.

About the author

Stephen Shankland has been a reporter at CNET since 1998 and covers browsers, Web development, digital photography and new technology. In the past he has been CNET's beat reporter for Google, Yahoo, Linux, open-source software, servers and supercomputers. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces.
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